On July 9, 1755, General Edward Braddock's British and Provincial forces were overwhelmingly defeated by French and Native forces at the Battle of Monongahela where present-day Braddock, Pennsylvania is located. Although much of the area had been cleared for farming by 1854, this painting gives a sense of the terrain of the battlefield before construction on Andrew Carnegie's first steel mill, the Edgar Thomson Steel Works, began in 1873 and forever changed the landscape. This painting and Braddock's Grave were commissioned by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.